Vow by Texas to streamline storm recovery, aid backfires

BEAUMONT, TEXAS » After Hurricane Harvey hammered Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott pledged that the country’s largest conservative state would lead its own recovery, streamlining federal aid to storm victims while avoiding the staggering inefficiencies of earlier Washington- controlled disaster responses.

“A Texas-sized storm requires a Texas- sized response, and that is exactly what the state will provide,” declared Abbott, who has made bashing the feds a centerpiece of his career.

But rather than becoming a new model for disaster recovery, Texas’ efforts almost six months in often have been the opposite, slow to unfold and tangled with bureaucracy.

Harvey made landfall in late August, with 130-plus mph winds and torrential rainfall that forced nearly 780,000 Texans to evacuate. About 900,000 later applied for government recovery assistance.

Since then, efforts to provide short- term housing for victims and emergency repairs to get people back in their damaged houses have lagged well behind ear- lier post-disaster efforts, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.

Federal records reveal that it took nearly four times as long to house people in trailers after Harvey as it did following Hurricane Katrina, whose chaotic aftermath became a national scandal. Repairs to houses also are running months behind the pace following 2012’s Super Storm Sandy and lower-profile disasters like Baton Rouge flooding in 2016.

Only 3,500 homes have been repaired in one Texas quick-fix program. A Government Accountability Office report showed nearly 19,000 repaired in NewYork during a shorter period after Sandy.

“A lot of the small communities have been left to their own devices. They don’t even know who to call,” said Shannon Van Zandt, a Texas A& M University professor who specializes in hazard reduction and recovery.

Texas officials attribute the delays to complex procedures used by the federal government — which had provided about $13 billion for recovery efforts through mid-February — and the state’s attempts to avoid earlier problems, such as shoddy construction.

Kevin Hannes, the Fed- eral Emergency Management Agency’s coordinating officer for Harvey, has praised the state’s efforts.

“All in all, the temporary housing program is moving along smartly,” Hannes said. “Is it moving as fast as any of us would like? No it’s not.”

FEMA administers the national flood insurance program, paying the claims of Harvey victims who had policies. Residents without insurance can apply for temporary housing, including trailers or basic repairs to make damaged homes habitable.

Abbott tapped Land Commissioner George P. Bush to lead the Texas effort, saying the agency’s contacts with local officials could help direct the federal aid efficiently across the Indiana-sized swath of territory ravaged by Harvey.

But Abbott’s order didn’t come until nearly three weeks after the storm, and an announced plan for distributing aid took until Sept. 23, nearly a month after Harvey’s first landfall, and weeks longer than similar programs elsewhere after past storms.

Since then, delays have grown. While Bush’s office says it is concentrating on using taxpayer dollars carefully rather than rushing to finish repairs, residents’ frustration is mounting.